There's new hope for wolverines: After a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity and allies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week said it will reconsider whether these majestic mountain-forest mammals should be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

There are likely no more than 300 wolverines left in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana -- and climate change and other threats continue to push them toward extinction. The Service proposed federal protections in 2013 but then withdrew its proposal the very next year. After we sued, a federal judge ruled this year that the Service's withdrawal was illegal and ordered the agency to reconsider proposed protections.

"We hope the Fish and Wildlife Service gets it right this time and provides these feisty predators with the safeguards they need to survive," said the Center's Andrea Santarsiere.

More than 16 million wild freshwater turtles have been exported from Louisiana in the past five years -- so on Wednesday the Center and allies petitioned the state to sharply curtail commercial collection of 20 species of these beleaguered creatures.

Our petition asks the state's wildlife department to change its rules to protect turtles from voracious trade; the agency has 90 days to respond. "Inadequate regulations essentially guarantee these turtles will disappear," said the Center's Elise Bennett. "They allow traders to capture them till no more turtles can be found." Read more.

$20,000 Reward Offered Over Killing of Oregon Mother Wolf

The Center this week added $10,000 to other rewards being offered for useful information on those responsible for killing an endangered Oregon wolf around Oct. 6 -- a female named "OR-28" who'd recently had a pup.

"This illegal killing of a mother wolf is heartbreaking," said Amaroq Weiss, our West Coast wolf organizer. "OR-28 was one of the first wolves to make the journey from northeastern to western Oregon. This killing leaves behind her mate and pup. It was a cowardly crime. I hope the perpetrator is caught quickly."

Anyone with information about this case should call the Fish and Wildlife Service at (503) 682-6131 or the Oregon State Police Tip Line at (800) 452-7888. Callers may remain anonymous.

Maybe you've heard: Triclosan, an antimicrobial agent, has been banned from soap products. So what's a germophobe to do? That's the latest conundrum the Center tackles in our Ask Dr. Donley column.

Triclosan isn't just any old toxin -- it's an endocrine disruptor that can affect thyroid function. It can also have unintended consequences on humans and wildlife when released into waterways. Although the FDA proposed eliminating triclosan from soaps back in 1978, the agency only recently finalized the ban.

Over livestock-industry objections, a court approved a settlement this week requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize a recovery plan for endangered Mexican gray wolves. With only 97 wolves and just six breeding pairs in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico at the end of 2015, the Mexican wolf is one of the most imperiled mammals in the United States.

For four decades the agency promised a recovery plan. The Center and our allies sued to get one in 2014, and now, backed by court order, the plan will be done by November 2017.

Get more from ABC News and check out this article on one of the Center's wolf experts, Michael Robinson.

Endangered Species Act Success: White-haired Goldenrod

The "white-haired goldenrod" sounds like something from a Tolkien novel, but its success story is far from fantasy. The Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that this pretty yellow Kentucky flower is recovered enough to be taken off the endangered species list. The plant was protected in 1988 because people were literally trampling it into extinction -- stepping on it, driving over it and bulldozing its habitat for development.

But the goldenrod is still threatened by recreation, climate change and invasive plants, so the Service will continue to monitor it. Read more in our press release.

"Our hearts go out to the tens of thousands of North Carolinians whose lives have been turned upside down by the horrible flooding. Sadly they've been put at additional long-term risk by the threat of pollution of their waterways and groundwater from billions of gallons of largely untreated animal waste at these industrial operations."

The Center and allies were in the Washington, D.C., Appeals Court this week as part of our fight to keep Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

The Humane Society and other groups, including the Center, are defending the 2014 legal victory that returned federal safeguards to Great Lakes wolves after the court found that the Fish and Wildlife Service had violated and misinterpreted the Act in previously removing them. The agency appealed that decision with the states of Wisconsin and Michigan.

"Without federal protection, hundreds of these wolves will once again suffer and die every year," said Collette Adkins, who was in the courtroom this week. "After the argument I remain hopeful that wolves in the Great Lakes will remain protected."

The U.S. Geological Survey Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Program keeps tabs on the health and habitat of bees in the United States. One of the program's endeavors has been the harrowing task of creating an archival photo reference catalog to help researchers identify a particular bee from a list of thousands of bee species. Many bee species vary in ways so minute that the differences are indistinguishable to the human eye.

To provide a remedy, Sam Droege (the head of the program) incorporates extremely high-resolution macro photography into the cataloguing process. The photos are so clear and stunning that they hold up as works of art -- revealing, for instance, tiny pores on the surfaces of bee bodies as beautiful intricacies, not just magnified bug parts.